Belgian midfielder gives Pep Guardiola’s team a degree of control by exploiting gaps in Arsenal’s defence, but the visitors’ frailties are also exposed
Arsenal and Manchester City played out a peculiar Premier League match that shifted between periods of incredible intensity and moments when neither side seemed particularly bothered by the outcome. It felt more like a pre-season friendly, and the fact the game’s first two goalscoring chances came from crazy deflections, with David Ospina blasting the ball at Raheem Sterling at one end, then Gaël Clichy hammering a clearance into Danny Welbeck at the other, summarised the strangeness.
Indeed, the pattern was the entire opposite of what you expect from a top-level match which, usually, lack structure in the opening minutes and then settle down into something more organised. Here, instead, there was an obvious structure to the opening, before everything became scrappy and disjointed.
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